The Power Of Blog (IV)

Richard Bennett has some interesting thoughts on weblogs and journalism (interesting at least to those of us who have been playing around in this medium for a while). One of those thoughts is that what is remarkable about the web is not that some journalists and others who write regularly (or semi-regularly) for the public prints find it to be useful and have even parlayed it into more regular writings gigs (a la FoxNews), but that for every one of those journalists, a hundred or more "experts" on any topic are writing about it on their blogs. I might put that number even higher -- there really don't seem to be that many journalists with blogs, which is why so many print journalists are writing articles expressing fascination with the phenomenon. It's great that a handful of people have secured regular gigs on FoxNews, but it's even better that I can turn to Den Beste for all sorts of fascinating thoughts on society and technology, or Hofer on finance and economics (and liberty), or Johnson on Arab-Israeli affairs (an area of interest for me also, but not so much so that I can't learn from others!), etc. And yes, to any number of people who will engage in fact checking of mainstream journalists. I just have to find the blogs. Granted, there's no check on quality in the form of editors or publishers -- ultimately, that comes from the integrity and reputation of the bloggers themselves. That it's very much a marketplace of ideas -- and that reputation is one selling point of various producers -- is one beauty of this medium.

The power of blog.

[Posted at 19:29 CST on 02/25/02] [Link]